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6/5/2010

Richard Neutra / Julius Shulman / Stefan Morsch

MARTa Herford Museum of Art and Design, Herford

Richard Neutra in Europe
Buildings and projects 1960 - 1970

On Friday 7 May, Marta Herford will be opening an extensive exhibition featuring original designs, water colour sketches, building plans, models and photographs by architect Richard Neutra, who was born in 1892 in Vienna and died in 1970 in Wuppertal.

Neutra rose to international acclaim with his epoch- making villas in the USA – iconic buildings which for generations have moulded our concept of modern American architecture. In fact the light, airy structures he designed have long been part of our collective repertoire of images. However, the European buildings designed by Neutra during the final decade of his life are less well known. The exhibition will shed light on the impact of this influential architect, who began his career in Europe, took the ideas of the Bauhaus with him to the USA, and then brought American modernism to Europe. An international team of experts has been working on this project for over two years. While conducting research for the exhibition and the catalogue (to be published by DuMont in Cologne), they discovered unfinished projects by Neutra in his archive at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), which will now go on display at Herford.

Photographer Iwan Baan who works for leading international magazines and journals, spent a year painstakingly documenting privately owned buildings in Europe designed by Richard Neutra, hardly any of which are open to the public. At both the exhibition and in the detailed catalogue, these photos will show these buildings' present-day appearance. Containing not only Baan's series of photos but also texts by for example Hubertus Adam, Joachim Driller and Lilian Pfaff, the catalogue will become a reference book and indeed compulsory reading for all architects, photographers and everyone else with an interest in architecture.

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A Lifetime for Architecture - The photograf Julius Shulman
curated by Christina Gräwe

Parallel to the exhibition “Richard Neutra in Europe”, Marta Herford will present an exhibition with photos by the legendary photographer Julius Shulman compiled and curated by Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt/Main (DAM). Shulman (1910-2009) covered the buildings of Richard Neutras and other protagonists of American Modernist architecture like no other photographer, thereby creating icons of the American way of life.

Just a few weeks before the archives of Julian Shulman (estimated at some 100,000 negatives) were handed over to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, the DAM had the opportunity to make an individual selection of photographs and to compile one of the most fascinating overviews of Shulman’s oeuvre (he died several months ago), a photographer who lent the architectural icons their very own sense of drama and poetry.

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Stefan Mörsch - Landnahme

Interiors and exteriors, urban and rural locations emerge from the darkness in the graphite drawings by Stephan Mörsch (born in 1974 in Aachen). The artist strings his exquisite drawings together like silhouettes of memory. Some sections are blurred into the vagueness of dreamlike (or nightmare-like) views or into the camera shake of fleeting travel observations. In the tradition of film noir, his filmic sequences of images show details of camera angles and conjure up scenes which are worrying or melancholic.

Similarly, his models aren’t just accurate replicas but also emanate an atmospheric density. The empty shells of deserted housing consist of simple, almost shabby materials. Seemingly inconsequential forms of architecture such as raised hides, beach huts, air-raid shelters and summer houses bring home the principles of the simple buildings which increasingly shape our everyday life outside the realm of professional designs. The juxtaposition of architect-designed houses and creative DIY, of icons and improvised shelters that confront us everywhere begs the question of whether the DIY store, the new dictate of form, is replacing a modernistic tradition. Are official and private construction drifting farther apart? Who do certain spaces belong to – and who controls them? The exhibition “Landnahme” (“Occupation”) uses drawings and models by Stephan Mörsch to tackle these questions by examining different ways in which land is explored, conquered and occupied.

Following several individual presentations and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad, Marta Herford is now staging the first solo exhibition in a German museum by Stephan Mörsch, who studied at Hamburg University of Fine Arts under the likes of Gunnar Reski, Alexander Roob and Pia Stadtbäumer.

Press Contact Karin Barth
Tel: +49 (0)5221 9944 3027 Email: karin.barth@marta-herford.de

Opening 7 May 2010, 7.30p.m.

MARTa Herford gGmbH
Goebenstraße 4–10, Herford
Opening times:
Open Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 11am – 6pm (closed on Mondays).
On the first Wednesday in the month from 6pm to 9pm Marta opens up its exhibition doors free of charge to art enthusiasts.
Admission: € 7
Concessions: € 4,50
Concessions are granted to students, schoolchildren, visitors who are unemployed or on income support, members of the armed forces, people doing national service (military/non-military). Association, disabled persons (please show proof of disability).

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